FTA: No merger challenged since January 2025. This means that dozens of mergers that would typically be anticompetitive bleed consumers for money (think vet and dentist rollups) will happen unchallenged.
I've seen gemini output it's thinking as a message too:
"Conclude your response with a single, high value we'll-focused next step"
Or sometimes it goes neurotic and confused:
"Wait, let me just provide the exact response I drafted in my head.
Done.
I will write it now.
Done.
End of thought.
Wait! I noticed I need to keep it extremely simple per the user's previous preference.
Let's do it.
Done.
I am generating text only.
Done.
Bye."
Thank you for the thoughtful analysis. I'd echo that the deregulation and corruption of these markets has two impacts:
1) less "legitimate" (non-corrupt) capital flowing to these markets which may ultimately reduce the liquidity and value of the asstrs.
2) more speculative deployment of capital, which means that capital is used for making bets rather than uses for productive purpose (such as investing in legitimate investments that are productive for the economy.
Why would a insider invest in legitimate, productive investment when they can make outsized gains in betting markets or corrupt futures markets?
And yes, long term this will massively taint the US financial power and make economies like the UK more appealing.
This is a vast and tricky question. The business model has basically fallen out from under journalism, and especially this kind of labor-intensive investigative reporting. The media landscape is increasingly dominated by moneyed individuals and companies essentially buying up the discourse.
I would really suggest subscribing to and finding ways to amplify independent outlets and journalists, and encouraging others to do so.
Only anti-trust action against big tech to break their ad monopoly (to make journalism profitable again) and breaking up media conglomerates (to reduce concentration of power in the journalism industry) can save journalism from becoming just a mouthpiece for the powerful. These things can only happen through politics. We need a political solution to save journalism.
Got it! Any recommendations on who to subscribe to? Any personal links for you?
In developer communities often you can support individual developers or groups through a monthly subscription / donation on their github page or similar.
Well, this piece was in The New Yorker, which is reasonably priced and regularly includes excellent investigative journalism. I get the physical copies, which can be too much to keep up with if you try to read everything, but it’s easy enough if you skim and just read the things that stick out as being of particular interest.
The New Yorker also comes with Apple News+ subscriptions (part of an Apple One plan that many people get for extra iCloud storage) which further includes a number of top-tier and local news orgs such as the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, SF Chronicle, Times of London, etc.
Treating quality investigative reporting like the scarce resource that it is, as one of the most well-known can you shed any light on why Reuters would delegate resources to commission investigative reporters to unmask Banksy (in a world where all-things-Epstein represents an unending source of investigative opportunities in the public interest)?
I'm all ears:
1. Feel free to share why unmasking Banksy was in the public interest
2. Whether you feel all other public interest priorities had been served by investigative reporting prior to commissioning his unmasking.
I have no idea, nor care, whether or not unmasking Banksy, specifically, was in the public interest. My only point is that it's not limited to topics that you consider important.
As for your #2, that seems reminiscent of "why are we going to space when there are so many problems here on Earth."
Yep it's hard to build a large liquid market for both sides of the bet without a central platform being legal. Look at polymarket as another example of things that people wouldn't bet on if a (legal in some countries) platform didn't exist.
Of those options I'd guess Hedgseth as he seems to be the one cheering the war and also using Christian rhetoric. Trump has also suggested he may have relied on Hedgseths advice to scapegoats Hedgseth in recent days..
It's true that a volatile environment in general is good for certain types of investment banking business, including facilitating this trade. I nevertheless think it's unlikely - honestly, a galaxy brain take - that Cantor Fitzgerald or other investment banks with influence in the Trump administration would push for policies like unconstitutional tariffs just to drive trading revenue. Maybe the strongest reason is that other, frankly more lucrative investment banking activities, like fundraising and M&A, benefit from a growing economy and a stable economic and regulatory environment.
It stretches your imagination to conceive of a financier chasing short term gains over the long term stability of the investment bank they are part of? I seem to recall an event back in the late '00s that you may want to look into.
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